All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.
— Prologue

“So what you’re saying is you can’t explain it.”
“I did explain it.”
“No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.”
— Chapter 5

Since most of you are not from the same part of the world as I am ... at least that’s what statistics tell me ... most of you won’t understand the quote “Well,
here we are again, old lovely ...”. It’s from a sketch that Germans traditionally watch on New Year’s Eve (called Dinner for One – ignore the man at the beginning and start at about 2:24). Anyway, end of the year and probably my last book this year is playing catch up to a series I must confess I slightly lost sight of. Despite reading trackers and publication lists, there were just too many other things I also wanted to read. So many books, so little time. I’m not too far into this yet, so I can’t say very much about it apart from that I really should start taking notes for books in a series to remember the details. But I’m certain that more will come to me while I read. And the plus side of not getting to this book immediately is that the next is also already available.

What is your final read of the year? Share teasers and New Year’s resolutions in the comments. Have a very good turn of the year and I’ll see you on the flipside.

Season Greetings, dear readers! I hope that you have some holiday cheer ... or at least a kind of weather that is less wet and stormy as my current location. But who wants a white Christmas, when you can have a green, wet, and stormy one? Especially if you have a collection of brilliant, holiday-spirited short stories to keep you company. I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of the narrations. I even wish that some of them were longer and that I could have the chance to get to know more of the characters, but that is often the beauty of such stories that they leave the rest to you imagination. And no matter if you celebrate Christmas or the Winter Solstice or Hanukkah, these cute love stories will certainly bring cheer to your bookshelf.

What are your experiences with short story collections? Love them? Not so much? Indifferent? Let’s hear from you in the comments. Have a very merry Christmas, if you celebrate, and in any case a lovely week.

“I'm serious. They’ll call me a pussy.”
“And if you help them, I’ll call you a dick. So no matter what you do, you’re going to be some form of genitalia.”
— Chapter 2

Chloe didn’t have all the answers, either. I knew that now. But she had known something all along that I hadn’t: that being ashamed of what you want or how you feel is pointless, and letting anyone else make you feel ashamed is a waste. We all wanted different things, and that was okay.
— Chapter 32

I have no idea what it’s like to date a football player ... or a soccer player for that matter. At least not a professional one with a team feud and everything. But that’s beside the point. The point is that this book is cleverly funny and entertainingly adorable. It also helps if you like Greek comedies, but that’s optional. I especially like that the book is so open about girls and their talks and experiences of physical intimacy. I am aware that this might repel readers, but I think it’s important to depict in books because the topic is a reality at that age for many girls. No, it’s not an instrument to get what you want, from neither side. And I think this book is a humorous approach to show exactly that. Among other things.

Next I’m in the mood for some seasonal reading, I think. For the past two years I’ve re-read Dash & Lilly’s Book of Dares in the run up to the holidays. Do you have any re-reading traditions? Share suggestions and teasers in the comments.

I’d done things—things I regretted and things I didn’t. I was too old to blame them on being young. My family had been too good to me for me to blame it on them. I’d made my choices by myself. Some of them had been wrong, but they were my choices. I owned them. No one else.
— Chapter 59

I like challenging books. And I like books that need time to develop their theory. And I really like books that have a strong underlying network of clues that, if decoded, explains everything. With this final instalment of the Mara Dyer trilogy there are two options for me: It’s not been long enough for me to think about and come to a conclusion, or there was too much time between books that I missed vital details ... I refuse to believe that the hints weren’t there and that I sat there at the end with a complete “what the heck just happened” for nothing because it made no sense.
The previous two books, and this one as well, have a great way of playing with your concept of right and wrong, real and unreal, while always staying grounded in their basic principles. I admire how the author has created such a complex theory and framework for all of it to work and I already know that I will come back to the books and dissect them to find all the hidden hints, links, and meanings. Because I will understand everything about them and not just the basics, dang it!

Do you think that book series suffer when you have too much time between their publication dates? Do you re-read before a new book in a series comes out? Share your thoughts and teasers in the comments!

They all yelled in excitement. Tamara yelled because she was happy, Aaron yelled because he liked it when other people were happy, and Call yelled because he was sure they were going to die.
— Chapter 10

“I see your future. One of you will fail. One of you will die. And one of you is already dead.”
— Chapter 14

Here’s what I should know by now but still struggle with: Reading in public is not something I should do if there is any chance of emotional turmoil ... and with these two authors that was obviously going to be the case. Mind you, this time I didn’t burst into tears (progress!), I just started arguing with the book and people maybe thought that I was a little demented. I had a lot of fun with this book and enjoyed the characters and story, the humour and the twisty twist that twists.
I have a severe dislike for all those supposed reviewers who have likened this to a certain seven-book-phenomenon-boy while obviously not having read the book. Or who discredit it because of the authors or whatever. No one is forcing anyone to read anything (well apart from school, but those books live and die with the teacher ... mostly). Books – and their authors – should never be objects of hate. Everyone is free to dislike a book or author, but that’s about it. No reason to be nasty about it or make others feel like they couldn’t possibly like something because that would clearly mean they had no taste.
I for my part am very much looking forward to discovering how this cursed business and the twist will work out. I understand that for this age group the book had to traditionally be a bit shorter, but I really wished that it could have been longer to add a little more detail and flesh out the world and its characters, which I’m sure will happen over the course of the following books. (A gentle reminder that the phenomenon-boy also took quite a while to grow into his characteristics ... I don’t recall him or his friends being fully formed characters in the first book. And rightly so, at eleven. That’s all the comparison I’m going to draw at this point.)

Is there a cooperation of two of you favourite authors that you would like to see? Or maybe it already exists? Share ideas and teasers in the comments.